Chicago police issue bulletin on gangs, high-powered weapons

CHICAGO — Chicago police issued a bulletin Monday warning its officers about gangs armed with high-powered weapons, after three people were shot to death over the weekend — including two attending a memorial for the earlier victim.

Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the three people who were killed in the shootings Sunday were all members of the same street gang.

A shooting early in the day left one man dead, and the two others were killed and eight people were injured in a spray of more than two dozen shots from two guns while attending a makeshift memorial for him. Police suspect they were all shot by members of a rival street gang in the same neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side.

The department beefed up patrols after the morning shooting of 26-year-old Daniel Cordova, who was found dead between parked cars in the Brighton Park neighborhood. The other shooting happened some 12 hours later, about a block away.

Given the very real possibility that the gang war has not played itself out, the department has saturated the same area with officers and tactical teams, Guglielmi said. It also has issued a warning about gunmen with weapons powerful enough to pierce bullet-proof vests.

“Given the type of shootings and the incident last week (in which two offers suffered gunshot wounds about two miles away) we have put out an officer safety bulletin,” said Guglielmi.

Guglielmi said the incident in which two officers were shot while sitting in a car does not appear to be connected to the bloody gang feud that erupted Sunday. Combined, however, they are the latest examples of what they have seen as a greater willingness of arm themselves with weapons most associated with soldiers in battle.

At the scene of the second shooting alone, Guglielmi said that more than two dozen shell casings were recovered, with police believing that there were two people firing the weapons.

“We believe it was related to the memorial, a number of the people there knew the victim, and the rival gang observed that and took advantage,” he said.

He also said that the man who was killed earlier in the day and the man and woman killed later in the day were all among approximately 1,400 people who, because of such factors as criminal records or gang ties, were on a list of those in the city most likely to commit gun violence or be targeted by it. He said the names of two others who were injured in the second shooting are on the same list.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office had not released the names of two victims Monday afternoon pending notification of kin.

No arrests had been made in either shooting incident as of Monday afternoon.